The Hollow Men
by Frayed Misfit
Summary: Their arms are stained with black, their fingernails stained red - A collection of sketches pertaining to the Death Eaters.
1. Barteimus Crouch Jr

**General Disclaimer: **I do not claim ownership over the works of J.K Rowling or T.S Eliot. No suing please.

**General Author's Note: **This is my new project – character sketches of all the male death eaters, in no particular order and following no logic. They should be viewed as separate sketches rather than as a unified whole. I have gained unprecedented inspiration from T.S Eliot and his poem of the same name – without him this would not be possible.

**The Hollow Men**

**Chapter One: **Barteimus Crouch Junior

_We are the hollow men_

_We are the stuffed men_

_Leaning together_

_Headpiece stuffed with straw. Alas!_

The house where he was born is now a prison – built not out of love but fear, for fear is the single greatest emotion of the human mind.

The memories of younger years fade into oblivion as he stares at the lines of children's books against one wall, tin wizards marching in crooked lines on top of the heavy bookcase.

The clumsy childhood paintings of dragons and ghosts line the opposite wall, fixed there clumsily with an immature stick-me spell.

Stuck in this place of innocence, he brews anger and revenge.

Plans formulate and fall within the mind half-corroded by Azkaban, and all he desires is power.

Power and praise.

The house elf leaves biscuits with too much chocolate and does not look him in the eye – but he understands her weakness.

For she too desires what is denied her, the smooth wooden handle of a wand, the magic spilling forth through mind into hand.

Staring into the mirror, Barteimus imagines his murderer's mask, lifts his nose and imagines the smell of blood, his ears attuned to the sounds of silent pleading for a life he wants to take.

He imagines his father begging, on his old arthritic knees.

Behind his portrait in the mirror is a room filled with innocence.


	2. Peter Pettigrew

The Hollow Men

**The Hollow Men**

**Chapter Two: **Peter Pettigrew

_Our dried voices, when_

_We whisper together_

_Are quite meaningless_

_As wind in dry grass_

_Or rat's feet over broken glass_

_In our dry cellar_

Even when he was a child, Peter plays games of hide and seek, throwing himself down in fields of dry grass he hides from himself, remerging hours later claiming to have been lost.

Closing his eyes against the harsh winter winds he places other people's minds within his own.

Today he will be James Potter, strutting around the school like he owns it, his feet falling on hollow stones, his head held high on his short squat neck.

Today he will be Remus Lupin, knees drawn towards his chest he dreams out of the foggy window, tracing the wisps of dawn that float over the Hogwarts grounds.

Today he will be Sirius Black, throwing his arm over an unsuspecting girl he whispers sweet nothings into her ear, laughing against the soft curls that tumble around her innocent shoulders.

Today he will be Lucius Malfoy, lifting his wand he flicks it almost lazily at the back of screaming retreating muggles, and as they fall he smiles.

And he places the masks he has worn upon a shelf, where they gather dust and then shine in the lazy filtered light like trophies.

The lives he has stolen parade in his memories like little toys, like broken dreams and he scratches his spotty chin, trying to decide who to be next.

Because these lives are not enough, for a person is only one thing, one small achievement in this huge aching world and he wants them all.

The beggar, the prostitute, the lover, the friend – to be them all, and to place them all upon that dusty shelf, a testament to life itself.

For it is the way little breaths of oxygen float in the space between the mouth and the sky on a frosted morning that intrigues him, not blank staring eyes and blood seeping from collapsed lungs.

He kills to try to understand how that life can be taken and where it goes, for no matter how many masks he wears the lives still fade around him, like candles turning into wax.

Today he will be Peter Pettigrew, the wiry hairs of the rat stretched taut between muscles that are not his own, shaking with fear he lies low beneath the street where his best friend has just been murdered.

He places the murderer's mask upon his blank façade and scurries into the darkness.


	3. Igor Karkaroff

The Hollow Men

**The Hollow Men**

**Chapter Three: **Igor Karkaroff

_Shape without form, shade without colour,_

_Paralysed force, gesture without motion;_

Igor sees things in black and white.

His wife holding his child beside the flickering oranges and reds of a winter fire are fading around the edges as he watches them pace within his memories.

They had erased him with a blink, turned their back on him; and who could blame them?

Even as he denies it himself, he could not hide to her his murderous qualities, his scolding hatred from those with unmagical blood.

She had left a rose painted black and the burnt stubb of the child's toy broomstick.

He has no future now, as he flees to a small dilapidated shack in the Highlands, surrounded by browning heather and smooth stones.

He has no future now.

For everything is tainted by his past, by the dark maroon stains that refuse to budge from his otherwise pale fingers.

His life is merely a background and the stench of death is forever in the foreground, shaping the laughter and the smiles and turning them putrid.

Sour and molding, his life crumbles around him like the broken battlements of Durmstrang.

His feet take him to mountain tops and to raggered cliffs by the wallowing sea, and he lifts his hands to the cream coloured sky and knows there is nothing there that would forgive him.

In his sleep he unconsciously scratches the ink upon his forearm.

They do not forgive him as the curses hit his sleeping heart, for to them he is a traitor, alone in the depths of this eternal coldness.

The others find him weeks later, the wild thistles growing through rotted floorboards, his body frozen to the disintegrating sheets.

The dark mark sailing into the wild untamed sky.


End file.
